The Bloody Mist
by thirdmetaphor
Summary: The story of Terumi Mei, from graduate of the Bloody Mist to legendary Mizukage. MadaMei.


**Village of the Bloody Mist **

Kishimoto once remarked that he was not good at writing female characters. That's fine. He has his weakness. But I'll give it my try, because _this _female character is simply majestic. Her abilities and intelligence, her enticing history, her half-mocking attachment to marriage, she's fascinating.

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* * *

Village of the Bloody Mist.

It's meaning is clear in the rapid stench that soaks the air, drawing the fear out of every thump of life littered across the grounds. Mei hides crouched behind a log of wood, shivering quietly, one hand braced against the gash that cuts her stomach.

_I don't want to die._

The _snapcrack _of bone and the pitiless shriek of torn muscle draw a morbid satisfication, but she can do nothing more than clench her teeth and try to wash out the sounds of pain. Above them, the sky seeps with evening and the cold falls like a stone, all one single swoop with no time for lackluster shades of dusk. It digs into her battered form, pushes past her bloodied fingers to rest inside, whispers to her shaking form that escape is impossible and that she's so _silly _to try.

They fortified the barriers around the exam arena. No one looks in. No one watches. No one else hears the ghostlike screams of the dead children whose newly emaciated bodies color the grass red.

A whip of kunai clashes only meters behind her log, and the cold realization settles unevenly onto her shoulders. She can't hide. The ones who hide are dragged by the curl of their fragile necks and put to death sooner than the others.

This is a culture, after all. A long coveted tradition. It makes them strong. Sensei had once remarked on the wondrous things a child can do with nothing but a single blade in his hand and the threat of death forced against his neck.

She lets go of her middle, looks down, and tries not to faint at the sight of what tears her as a singular flicker of life's resilience. It stays there grotesquely, no matter how desperately she wishes it to be a dream. There is nowhere else to go.

Teeth clattering, Mei stands.

There is only a single person left in sight within the clearing bounded by their exams. He stays in the centre, blood dripping languidly off his arms. Someone has slashed his shoulder in a last act of desperation, but he probably cannot feel it. His eyes have already taken the look of a Kiri shinobi.

When he sees her balanced unsteadily over the log, he smiles desperately. "Mei-chan, I guess it's just us, right? I can't find anymore. I… think I got almost half of our class, actually. That's good, isn't it, Mei-chan? Sensei used to say that the winner usually only took around five victims, because the others would kill each other."

She doesn't have time. Her own life beats wildly within her hands and begs for her to protect it. It's all she can hear.

"M-Mei-chan, how many have you g-gotten so far?"

None. This will be the first.

She wraps one hand around the hilt of a half-broken kunai. The pain in her stomach paints spots in her sight but nothing matters but the boy before her whose name she's long since forgotten, but whose eyes are now burned in her memory. She remembers running, stumbling, with a manic glint shrouding her eyes. She remembers the kunai meeting flesh even before he finishes speaking, the iron grasp of irony tight around her broken blade as it digs into him.

Then she forgets.

Night falls along with the life protruding from her weapon. The darkness covers them completely, masking everything that's happened, making it easier for the instructors to come and retrieve the bleak winner. She steps shakily away as he falls, glancing around the clearing at the mass of children's bodies.

_Someone come. End this. Please. Isn't it over now? _

A creak: a step of a child's foot on a leaf, another shimmer of life. It rings through the air to her over-sensed mind like a half-mad plea for death and she spins to heed it.

There's one more in her group that's still alive. Another classmate, hiding behind a tree. This time it's a dark haired slip of a boy, one who she remembers from the bottom of their class. He has his arms wrapped around his knees, rocking himself slowly and muttering words under his breath. It takes a while for the sudden silence to reach him, and his shoulders shake with fear as he turns to look at her.

It's strange how quickly places change.

Haruki, his name is Haruki. Mei whispers it, rolls the name over her tongue, and while her mouth is open she catches the taste of the blood in the mist that separates them. It tastes of fear.

_I'll stop this. Once I win, I'll stop this, I swear. For now, please die quietly, Haruki-kun._

She raises the kunai once again.

.o.

Kirigakure is not hell. It's not, even if the other countries sometimes think it is. It's simply a land caught in the temporary lull of secrecy, and secrecy is a judge that often looks away.

Mei waits in her hospital bed like a string pulled taunt, with a sharp mind she doesn't know how to wield and a body that knits itself together even stronger. Sometime during the next two weeks the man she calls otou-san comes to visit with a pleading glint in his eye, a quiet beg for acknowledgement that she barely notices. She does not know he will die in three week's time.

Instead, she smiles purposelessly and watches as he leaves. When she opens her eyes next, there is a different man in the room. He's grey haired, stern-looking, wearing a jonin flak jacket and an eye-patch across one eye. He introduces himself as her sensei.

"Ao… sensei," she tries, tasting how it feels on her lips. "You're going to… teach me?"

He nods. "You'll have a separate sensei for kunoichi lessons, of course, but I am the jonin-sensei assigned to the graduate of this year's group twenty-four. I will teach you ninjutsu and taijutsu and maybe genjutsu, if you are suited for it."

"I'm suited for ninjutsu," she tells him. The air she speaks with has to pass through her injured stomach and every syllable is a staccato stab of pain, but she will not back down before a jonin. "I was born with the hyoton and futton affinities. Those in my clan can breathe fire and acid."

"I know," Ao remarks. "I have received a full listing of your capabilities. I've only had one student before, and he died young, so I only want to know about you. We're going to be seeing much of each other, after all."

She doesn't want to tell him about the unremarkable kid she was over two weeks ago.

Mei looks up and says, "I am the next Mizukage."

.o.

Two weeks later, Mei stands before the desk of the Mizukage's office, trying to ignore the dull, ghostlike pain in her stomach. It is custom for the Yondaime to meet with the graduates one by one and instill in them the loyalty of Kirigakure.

But the office is a strange place when the council is away, especially in the late evening as the rain of Kiri crashes relentlessly outside the windows. There's something odd about the relics of predecessors lining the walls. The tall staff leaning against the desk. The man who stands silently in the corner, pretending not be seen. She cannot stay still in a place like this. Mei shifts uneasily from one leg to another as she waits for him to speak, trying not to glance toward the other presence in the room.

"How many?" He asks.

"Two, Mizukage-sama."

Yagura plays idly with his staff behind his desk, but his eyes widen slightly when he hears her answer. "Two? You graduated from a class of twenty, and you only took two of them?"

"Yes," Mei's smile is of honestly so deep it falls into deception. "Two."

"Terumi Mei," he says finally, although there is something essential now missing in his eyes. "You have been selected to be considered for chunin immediately. At ten, you will be the youngest chunin Kiri has produced." Other countries graduated their chunin at far younger ages. Eight, even six, sometimes. But children too young who pass Kiri's graduation exam are known not to last long on the inside.

"Yes, Mizukage-sama."

"But I have called you here mainly because in a few years, I will have to decide on my successor. It is generally thought wise to teach future candidates from a young age."

She bows her head. "It would please me, Mizukage-sama." She tries and fails to quell the smile on her lips.

"It would, wouldn't it?" The man who has been like a statue in the corner now moves, walks over, and she tries not to flinch as he approaches faster than his large form should allow. He towers over her, and nowhere on him is the mark of Kiri. There is only a black mask covering his face, and he removes it as the evening light strikes him. For a second she thinks she can see the glimmer of genjutsu, but it disappears as quickly as it comes.

He stands before her, giving her a considering look, and somehow he has more of a presence in the room than the Mizukage himself. Mei does not move. The rain continues to thunder against the glass of the wide windows and for a moment, there is the brief lurk of fear, that singular emotion they'd tried to drain out of her completely with the terrors of the graduation exam. It raises its unpleasant head in the pit of her stomach and sets every nerve on end.

"Mizukage-sama?" She asks, turning away from the unknown man. But Yagura is sitting behind his desk like a puppet, hands folded neatly beneath his chin, eyes glazed over with something similar to the sheen of death.

Her question is answered by a thunder snap, and suddenly Mei feels the unknown man step close to her and slip a hand under her chin.

He tilts her up to meet his eyes. "Two bloodlines, is it? It seems that even Kiri has its jewels."

"Who are you?" Her tone is dangerously low but he seems unworried. His dark hair falls straight over his shoulders, its ends skimmer across a black cloak stained with red clouds. She looks up into the afterglow of his green eyes and feels something important changing inside her.

"Glorious," Uchiha Madara mutters as she stares back defiantly. "This one is glorious."

Why… why aren't his eyes green anymore?

* * *

The man tells her his name is Haruki.

It causes her to wonder, and to question, but ultimately there are many Harukis of the world, and he has no way to know of her ghosts. She visits him whenever called to the Mizukage's office. Her Haruki-sama _is_ the Mizukage, and she must never tell anyone.

"Why do we purge the bloodline clans?" He asks her one day while she looks out the wide windows that display Kirigakure in its entirety. "Why, Mei?"

Mei pauses, and a brief sense of unease overtakes her. But it fades quickly, and is replaced by her usual scholarly curiosity. "Will you tell me?"

He nods, arms crossed over his chest as he stands beside her. Below the glass the civilians are rushing home in the evening. The pitter-patter of children's feet mingles with the yelling of the market-people as they try to sell the day's catch of fish. On the other side of the vast expanse, there are shinobi – chunin – training at the posts. Their tiny figures far below kick at wooden practice dolls and thrust each other into the ground.

"What you must learn is that power loses its potency when spread out too far, it becomes a mess of mere politics. And when there are too many holders of power in a country, they will soon recognize its need to be concentrated to regain worth. And so they have wars. To prevent this, we take decisive action early on."

Mei nods, soaking in each precious word. Haruki-sama likes to teach, and he is far more knowledgeable than her own sensei.

"Do you understand, Mei?" He looks down at her, and in the deep sun his eyes are almost not-green. "Do you understand why I had your clan killed?"

"I understand, Haruki-sama," she replies.

.o.

There are parts of her Madara hasn't yet taken, because he needs them there.

"Spar with me, Ao-sensei," she says. The training grounds are empty in the early morning, when most are too tired to wake. Mei has been awake for hours and her skin, newly washed in the harsh waves of salt water from her swim, is pink and damp. Her netted tights lie in a pile with the rest of her underclothes and she stands in shorts and t-shirt, morning sun beating down on her auburn hair.

Ao sighs and crosses his arms. "You aren't supposed to be here, Mei, you have kunoichi lessons right now. Where is your kunoichi instructor?"

"Hopefully dying in a hole somewhere," she says bitterly. "I don't want to learn about stupid pearl-diving. I'm a kunoichi, I'll never need to dive for pearls in my life."

"But that is what the civilian women do here," he explains. " In other countries, the kunoichi learn flower-arranging and painting and sculpture. In Kiri you learn pearl-diving, just as the boys learn fishing."

"Hmph. That's a thankless job, there's probably only one pearl in every hundred shells."

He frowns. "It's our culture. You have to learn so you can disguise yourself among them, or infiltrate them."

"I won't," she snaps. "Mizukage-sama only gives me missions where I can look my victim in the eye and tell him my name. I'll never need to pretend to be anyone, that's below me."

"That is what shinobi _do_." Nevertheless, he removes his flak jacket and puts it to the side, meeting her in the centre of the well-worn training grounds.

She narrows her eyes. "I'll define that word myself, Ao-sensei. Fight me."

And when Ao-sensei unleashes his Hyuuga eye and springs at her, she is ready.

.o.

Every day after eating dinner in her empty apartment, she goes to the Hokage's office to see Madara. It's as routine as brushing her hair in the mornings.

Sometimes he concedes great stories of the past that make her wonder how much he's truly seen. But she never wonders who he is, because the concept of wondering something like that never passes her mind.

"When you become Mizukage, never make the same mistakes as the old Kazekages once did," he tells her another day as she listens obediently. "You see, they failed to make their mark on the world, and now they are known as the least of the Five Countries. They failed to distinguish the essential difference between dependency and aid. Never allow Kiri to become like that."

And even later, when they are alone in the Mizukage's office on the day she finally receives jonin status – Yagura is present, but no longer counts as presence – she looks up at him in a kind of quiet delight and wraps her arms around her new flak jacket.

"You like it," he observes, all calm voice and level head, dark hair tumbling over one shoulder as he tilts his head to the side. "But it is only the first step."

"I know, Haruki-sama." She grins. "I will rule soon, won't I?"

"Yes, yes you will," he murmurs as they stand facing each other. Yagura's sightless eyes look on. "You will rule this small world, Mei."

And she's too far-gone to note Madara's unspoken words: _and I will rule you._

.o.

Meanwhile, her reputation stretches its far-reaching arms beyond their country, carried to foreign eyes like a ship set to sail by the wind. Soon, the Five Countries know of the girl who calls herself the Goddess of Kiri.

"Why 'Goddess'?" Ao-sensei remarks as she walks with him down the shoreline, watching the fishermen reel in their dinners. "A little overreaching, isn't it? You aren't yet the strongest shinobi in the country."

"But I'm stronger than you, Ao!" Mei chimes happily, because she is.

It is known to only two people that she will become Mizukage, but two is enough. She can trust in the future and instead look to the beauty of the village in the sea breeze, the civilian men who haul in glittering salmon by the hundreds and the children who play by the water's edge in the sunlight.

He sighs. "That doesn't answer the question. Don't you think Yondaime-sama will be a little unnerved, with you claiming a title like that?"

She neglects to mention that it had been Yondaime-sama who gave her the name. "He doesn't mind. Where are we going?"

Ao takes her hand just like he once did when she was a little girl, and leads her along a wooden platform that looks out into the sea. "Well, since you're now a jonin, they thought to give me another student. I brought you to meet him. He's a shy boy, but very talented. His name is Choujuro."

They walk down the platform that sways in the waves, and Mei notes for the first time that there is a boy sitting off its edge, swinging his legs in the water's mist. He is a slight kid who wears shorts down to his knees in the same deep blue as her shirt, and he turns sharply when their footsteps stop behind him.

Mei kneels beside him, and holds out her hand. But he does not take it, doesn't even look her way. She frowns, "come on, Choujuro-kun, you can't be this shy. You're a shinobi of Kiri!" But there's a hand on her shoulder pulling her away, and she stumbles back as Ao-sensei gives her a firm look.

"Be gentler," he tells her quietly. "It will take a while before he can speak, he's still recovering. The exam was only three days ago, after all." Ao speaks with the same quiet wisdom that all those who failed to fail the Bloody Mist have gained, and Mei steps back with understanding weighing heavy on her chest.

And she finds herself wondering, wondering if maybe those who kill under orders could be murderers all the same.

But the thought quickly vanishes from her mind, and Choujuro accompanies them to Ao's seaside home. They walk along the shore in silence with the occasional interruption of Ao speaking of the foreign politics he's fascinated by. When they arrive, Mei pulls her sensei's new student to sit with her on the porch while he goes to bring them tea.

It takes a while to coax speech from him, but she is nothing if not persistent, and within minutes the boy talks to her.

"How was it, for you?" She finally asks him. "Do you still remember it all? How many did you kill?" She doesn't know where this quiet fascination came from, but it feels like something familiar.

The boy shivers in the afternoon light, holding his arms around his knees as if the warm brilliance of summer chills his bones. "I… killed one, Mei-san." He admits.

"Is that so?" She tilts her head to one side and stretches her legs out in front of her. The winds from the nearby sea waft over her skin, skimming over the netted tights she wears under her shorts. "I only killed two, and I thought my situation was rare."

Choujuro is silent for a long while, and when he speaks it's with a hesitant trepidation, as if wondering at any moment if it would be possible to swallow his words and never emit them again. "The… the winners always kill the least, Mei-san. Most lie about the… death count, but they conserve their strength… until the end. That is the only way to survive the exam."

Gulls fly aimlessly overhead as she contemplates it, and something inside her long forgotten tries to call for attention.

.o.

On the night of the day she becomes seventeen, Madara calls her to the office once again. Mei appears before him in her netted tights and loose shirt, kunai pouch on her hip, trying to keep the brilliant smile off her face.

"Mei," he cups her cheek as they stand alone – truly alone – in the room, surrounded by the relics of Mizu's history and the shinobi mission reports lining the desk. He's never failed to please her with his looks, an elegance that seems swept across his every movement, firm shinobi muscles beneath her sometimes-daring hands, green eyes that shine like jade in all their timeless beauty.

"Is this it, then, Haruki-sama? Now that I am seventeen, will I become stated as Mizukage?"

There's a brief glint of amusement in his eyes. "In only a few days, Mei. A few more days. Seventeen is the age boys become men and girls become women. Is there anything else you want, at seventeen?"

"Marry me," she says without hesitation. Ao is always teasing her for having no interest in boys, and saying she would never be married. But she has no wish to marry anyone else. What is marriage, but a shackle around her proudly scarred wrist? There is only one person she can marry with freedom, the one she chooses.

He quirks an eyebrow in response but his hand does not leave her cheek. "You would think like that of a man so much older?"

"You're not just _old, _Haruki-sama. You're immortal," she chimes. "You've told me about experiencing things far in the past, almost seventy years ago, but you don't look seventy. Therefore, you're immortal." She pauses. "And it would be useful to have someone immortal married to me. Just think of all the things I could ask you!"

But he simply drops his hand to brush against her collarbone, and a knowing look lights his eyes when her skin heats under his touch. His lips twitch briefly, as if tempted to submit. For a single moment he leans down and presses his mouth to hers, and the touch of his lips is a cold fire that sears through her skin. Then he steps away.

"No, Mei," Madara tells her.

.o.

"I'm going to be Mizukage."

It's the first time in years that she's told her sensei with such certainty, and he looks up from his desk in astonishment, pen held in one hand, mission-report half written in his typical scrawl.

"Well, that's ambitious of you. But Yagura-sama is in good health, isn't he?"

Mei nods. "He is, but once he dies, I will take his place."

Ao looks back at her, perturbed. But then his features slowly relax. "Ah, I remember. That old dream of yours, was it? You wanted to do away with the graduation exams." He smiles a gentle smile at his student, who leans over a chair in the jonin briefing room.

Mei tilts her head to one side in confusion, and Haruki-sama's teachings spring effortlessly from memory. "No, Ao. Of course not. We need those exams, you see. They are essential to our identity, and they help propagate our reputation of power."

She isn't sure why her former sensei looks at her so strangely.

.o.

Everyone in Mizu knows of the rambunctious girl with the wild red hair and low-cut shirt, knows that she has more S-ranks under her belt than anyone her age has ever managed before. But only Madara knows the potential of her mind, which he's long since locked. And one day when he makes an appearance in her small apartment in the center of the village, her eyes light with surprise and barely-contained excitement.

Kiri rains often, the oceans scattering over the village with sporadic uncertainty. But it only accentuates the extent of her joy as she tugs him by one cloaked sleeve into the apartment and pulls him into her small room. Mei smiles, because she thinks he's given in.

And that night, her hands sprawl over Madara's chest when she rocks into him, taking him in mercilessly until his grip of her firm waist weakens as he's repeatedly thrust into ecstasy. He relinquishes rare moans under her, a token from a relic of greatness, and she absorbs it from him with every one of his thrusts. It pleases her most to see that he's human.

"So young, yet such energy," Madara remarks breathily and he buries himself deeper, reaching down to play at her with one overly rough finger while he pushes into her, swallowing every one of her excited yells as the sensations of his hand shoot up her spine. The darkness of the room hides them, and the sheets are discarded to the side as they go against the wall behind the bed. "There's something you want from me isn't there? No need to look like that, everyone does."

"Nothing else, Haruki-sama," she insists as she falls backward, onto the abandoned sheets. "I want you, that's all." Her fingers replace his, swirling around her core for his view, writhing against the soft pressure she makes.

And he adjusts his lean weight on top of her in a new body primed by immortality and genjutsu, hands running over breasts far fuller than before and tangling into hair almost as long as his own. Mei questions it in her mind, wonders why she spills this much into her fingers like she's done for no one else. But for now all she cares for is the firmness above her, the weight of his cock in her hand as she takes him and guides him in.

When she finally collapses beneath him, he sits over her, looking down onto her heavy breathing and arms sprawled around her head. Mei smiles up at him. "I take back my proposal, Haruki-sama. With something like this, I don't ever want to get married."

He settles beside her and traces lean fingers down her body. "What is this?" He asks, fingering the scar across her stomach. "It seems old."

She nods. "It was done during my graduation exam, by a friend of mine. Ai-chan. I ran away, though." She looks away almost guiltily at the admission, but Madara's fingers grip her chin and turn her face towards his.

"Hmm? Could this be one of the reason you let me finish inside?"

Mei nods again, because it's never been something she's regretted. "Yes. I can't have children, Haruki-sama. But that's fine." She wrinkles her nose. "They're just annoying little things anyway."

His lips twitch into a brief smile, and then he pushes himself up to lean over her, noting the way her eyes run openly across his chest. "Despite your charming vigor, there was a purpose for me coming here," his eyes flicker, once, twice, the green morphing into a _somethingelse. _"Tomorrow, you are the Mizukage, Mei."

A grin plasters itself across her naked face, a feeling of pure triumph lighting within her. Mei sits up, pulls on her shirt, and leans forward to feel his mouth on hers once again. But when he pulls away, somehow, for some unknown reason, he is no longer Haruki.

Madara brings down the genjutsu for the first time.

* * *

"M-Mei-san?"

It's Choujuro who finds her, sitting with her back against a stone Kiri building along the street hours later, arms wrapped around her knees, wearing nothing but her loose blue shirt and soaked through to the skin.

He wraps his raincoat around her and tries to pry her arms away from her legs but her grip is like iron, nails drawing blood from her knees. "Mei-san! You'll fall sick! Why aren't you wearing anything else?!" When he sees no response, he looks down both sides of the rainy street and stands. "Stay here, Mei-san. I'll find Ao-sensei. Please don't move." He runs off and she pauses at the way the moonlight reflecting off his light hair.

But long after he's gone, Mei staggers to her feet. Clenches both hands into her dripping hair. _Warns _herself to calm down.

The description matches perfectly, from the red of the Sharingan eyes to the stories of Konoha's founding that he's relayed with startling familiarity that she _should _have found suspicious. The man that taught her political theory and named her a goddess and took her roughly against a wall is Uchiha Madara.

It's a slow recognition. It's starts with the joy that she once felt blossoming inside with cloying coquettishness, now somewhat empty. Why did she want to become Mizukage? Kiri's kage receives no riches, only a washed-out fame that slips easily into infamy. A kage's pawns shouldn't obey with gritted teeth.

"Onee-san?" The stop building opens its door and a little girl peers outside, taking in her wet form. "Otou-san says it fine to let you in, if you want something to eat. No one should be outside in rain like this."

No one should be outside in the rain. Kiri's rains are its oceans, the briny salt of the sea mixed in with the stuff of clouds, pouring down and seeping through skin and bone. No one should be outside in the rain.

No one should have her will wretched apart.

Mei falls back against the wall of the building. The water runs down her shirt, down her bare legs as if washing her persona away. Kiri's Goddess has done nothing but play pawn for its shadow of a kage and propagate the fear she's promised to remove. Not a goddess at all. She doesn't want that name any longer.

"Get away," she mutters. "I don't need food". She will stay in the rain until its harsh flow washes everything away and reveals the old dreams buried deep in her mind.

.o.

The next time she wakes, it is morning and she lies in Ao's guest room. The soft blanket of the futon almost makes her forget but it cannot drive the knowledge fully from her mind, cannot erase what she's already seen. But it tries, and Ao tries, and that helps.

He enters the room minutes later holding a tray with food and raises an eyebrow when he sees her sitting up. It's a typical gesture of his, a kind of experienced nonchalance that comes with interacting with both Mei and Choujuro, a task requiring the patience that thrums even now through his every vein. Ao lays the tray by the futon and sits down, waiting for her to begin.

Mei looks down at her hands for the longest while, noting how thin her fingers are against the sheets. When she speaks, it's with a quiet fury, "Ao, did Mizukage-sama send for me?"

"Yes, actually," he sighs. "But perhaps you shouldn't take that call, if this has anything to do with why Choujuro found you outside yesterday. Half-naked, apparently. Should I be worried? You never did go to see your kunoichi instructor, in the end."

A wry smile pulls at the end of her lips. "I was not sleeping with Yagura-sama."

"Well that's certainly relieving," he says sternly. "He's older than your father was, despite his young looks."

At that, she feels like laughing and telling him exactly how old the man she _took_ truly was. But the words stay caught in her throat, balled up in the stickiness of duty, and she sits up and notes that she's still dressed in her wet blue shirt.

Ao glances away. "You'll catch a cold if you stay too long in that. My sister's old room is down there, and I haven't moved her things out yet. You can take anything that fits. She… won't be needing them anymore."

.o.

The blue dress is made of a softer material than she is used to. It's the dress of a former clan heir, and even if the clan has long been slaughtered it still maintains some of the dignity imbued in it by its former owner.

Mei smoothes it down over her legs to where it stops at her knees. It's a cumbersome, weighty thing, pulled down by the fine embroidery at its borders and the rich folds of cloth at its cinched waist. She'll wear it.

There is an essential similarity between Kiri's kunoichi and Kiri's civilian pearl divers, and it's taken years for her to understand. It is that they both submit. The pearl divers submit their health and their beauty, for when they thrust themselves into rapid waves for just a chance and come back up with salt-parched lips and tangled hair, they hide behind the rocks to straighten themselves before approaching the rest. Many think themselves superior when they succeed, superior to all those who have strived for the same thing, but in the end they have taken the same risks.

How can she rule a land without knowing every grain of it?

The kunoichi place themselves high, especially in a country where they kill their friends to move forward, but they submit other things, and Mei knows this. She knows this from the rock of her mother's arms while embedding established dreams within her, from the lithe grace of the Kiri hunter-nin who cut their hair short and revel in a dangerous kind of beauty, from every shinobi that camouflages her face, removes her piercings, washes the color from her clothes, and from her eyes.

She won't submit.

.o.

Despite the fear that threatens to break her, her back is straight when she arrives at the Mizukage's office. Yagura is there, and his pen scratches aimlessly across treatise papers. He will not look up unless the other figure in the room instructs him to.

Madara stands before the desk in front of her, taking in her painted face and blue dress. "That will be difficult to fight in."

"I'm glad you think me competent, then, Haruki-sama." She pauses. "May I call you that, or should I say 'Madara-sama' instead?"

She would infiltrate. This was not beneath her. This was what shinobi did.

"Whichever you prefer," he replies uncaringly, "come here, Mei. Sit."

And she sits beside him over the Mizukage's desk while the monotonous scrape of pen on paper, of pen on blank mind, echoes behind them. Before them are the wide windows of the tower. It's noon, almost, and the village is bathed in a glasslike sunlight.

"Do you know what I learned from him?" Madara asks, tilting his head slightly back towards Yagura. "I learned that a leader must have a _mind. _He must not be an ignorant creature like the rest, or he will require tiresome supervision. Yagura is an irreversible failure. And for you to be different, you must have your own will."

She frowns, and every pore of her skin leaks with anger but he is Madara, and this is the only way. "You did not use the same genjutsu on me that you used on him."

"Correct," his eyes darken by a fraction. "And now that you have your own mind, it seems that there is more I will need to teach you. But I cannot begin right away, because I have business in Konoha and I leave in three days." Madara turns to face her. "When I return, I will instate you."

"Yes, Madara-sama."

.o.

For the next two days, Mei watches, hawk-eyed, thin-lipped. She watches Kiri, and the tower than rises in the distance. She watches the crowds of civilians that mill through the streets and the blood-red sun every time it falls.

On the third day, she goes to the sea.

Her clothing is discarded to the side and she steps onto the rocks, looking to the sides at the civilian women who prepare for the same. Some look curiously at her face, recalling a faded memory of seeing her walk through the streets with a Kiri hitai-ite wrapped tight around her forehead, but no one calls her out because none of them recall her name. These are civilians. They have no business with the shinobi of Kiri. The evening sun is unforgiving and bright, and against it the cool water is a slice of bliss across her toes. Mei leaps off the rocks and into the deepest ends. Every eye is on her as she dives farther than anyone else dares.

_Kickkickkick _and she is a civilian girl. Her clan was never slaughtered, and Ai-chan and Haruki-kun never died. The water invades her senses, but if she is to rule, she'll rule all of it, every speck of ocean that coats the land. She would not become a Mizukage like Yagura who sits like a puppet at the country's head.

And when she breaks through the surface of the water, the civilians do two things. First, they laugh at her for not remembering to tie back her hair, and giggle at the way it's strewn all over her face. Then they look eagerly towards the shell in her hand, because no one else there has the body of a kunoichi, and no one else dares to dive near the dangerous rocks where there are shells unexplored.

Mei pushes herself onto the rocks. With the heat beating down on her salt-drenched hair, she uses her teeth to crudely wretch open her prize. The shell's pink lining stares back at her. There's no pearl inside, as there rarely is.

But they cheer anyway when they finally recognize her and pin down her name. Kiri's Terumi Mei, with the deep sun sifting into rainbows in the mist that glimmer over her skin.

.o.

_I have to do it now. While he's away. _

"Ao, Choujuro, I want you to do assist me with something."

When she finishes explaining, Choujuro looks hesitant and Ao watches her skeptically with furrowed brows.

"Isn't this hasty, Mei?" Her former sensei asks. "I didn't think there was any part of Yagura-sama's rule that you opposed too much."

"I changed my mind." She pauses. "I changed my mind _back_. Will you help me, or not? If I succeed, the Bloody Mist will be destroyed and the two of you will be stated as my advisors."

Politics is a simple thing, and the law tends to forget the winners once they've won. It clings to the faults of the others, and the more she tries to abide by it the further its claws will sink into her. There are other ways. Among the whir of policy and changes that will be made through her iron fist, no one will remember her second murder.

And the quiet Choujuro steps forward, nods, and slips his hand onto her sleeve with his strangely vice-like grip. "I will help, Mei-san."

.o.

Kiri's council meeting is held the next day in the conference room of the tower. All ten of the Mizukage's council sit gathered around the table, and Yagura is positioned at their head, holding his staff tightly in one fist. This is the scene Mei sees as she bursts through the door.

"A disturbance," one of the old men hisses. His eyes scan over her flak jacket, and that of Ao behind her. "Jonin, this had better be an emergency."

"It is," she says darkly. One finger rises to point at their doll-like kage. "We have discovered that Yagura-sama is under permanent genjutsu, and is thus unfit to rule. Today, I will take his position."

Silence falls heavily in the room among burgeoning whispers of treason and coup, but Ao and Choujuro both stand to either side, holding off the council members who try to interrupt as she walks to stand before Yagura. He looks up at her calmly, and for one unalterable moment his eyes flash with recognition.

"Yes," he says, brokenly. "Thank you."

The words echo through the ears of the council members as she places her hands into a seal.

Despite destroying his mind, Madara has left his abilities intact, and this is the only true rite of passage that Mei needs. She follows him out of the tower and he runs, shattering glass and stone behind her, tracing him down to the market places below where people scatter and cast frightened glances. She breathes molten fire into his mirrors, acid air to his staff.

He lands one mark on her, and it reopens a scar so painful she has to blink white spots from her eyes.

But it is a quick battle, and in the centre of everything the people cannot help but watch. When she finally stands over Yagura's prone body, reaches down, takes the wide-brimmed hat and places it upon her own head because she needs no one else to do it for her, every civilian eye and every shinobi eye watches.

Some remember her as the self-proclaimed Goddess of Kiri, piling S-ranks and shooting teasing glances at any good-looking man in the vicinity. Others remember her as a girl sitting on a rock by the sea in the midday heat, proudly holding an empty shell as the mist glittered across her tangled hair.

Mei clenches the Mizukage's hat tightly over her head until it feels like an extension of her mind. "This village," she chokes out, "will no longer be known as the Bloody Mist."

And when she stands there this time with one bloodied hand clenched to the reopened slash across her stomach, not relinquishing her stance for even a second, they cheer, and she accepts their cheer.

.o.

Haruki-kun does not have a grave, none of them ever do, but he has a name, and it's scribbled into a stone at the back of the training grounds like all the rest. Sometimes the potential genin would come see it before the day of their graduation. They still do, but Mei has made it that they no longer dread what they see.

She lays a single broken kunai at the foot of the stone.

"You've always been a strange girl, Mei," Ao comments. "People usually bring flowers to graves." Choujuro is beside him, watching her with understanding in his eyes.

"This isn't a grave," she retorts, trailing one finger down the scratched-out lettering. "This is the name of a boy I murdered, and I only ever murderedtwo. He was put to death by the Mizukage herself, so he went out properly and he deserves to be acknowledged for it. The last thing he'd want is a stupid flower."

The clearing around them is silent, and the sea's cooling scent sifts through the air from their right, where the grassy path leads down to the shoreline. It's a fitting place for Haruki-kun to lie, and maybe a fitting place for her Haruki-sama as well, as her mind slowly sheds him.

"Come, Madara," Mei whispers as she straightens. "Come back. I will see you. Preferably in bed where I can show you what else I've learned about beautiful men, but wherever you want is fine. Try to kill me if you wish, and watch as they all rush to take my place." She turns, and a half-smile tugs at the corner of her lips.

"There is no need to worry," Ao says gruffly. "We've already documented Yagura-sama's control. The future Mizukage will be watched strictly by your instructions, if you happen to die early. Not even your Uchiha Madara can cast a genjutsu over a whole country."

Choujuro nods, and the strange hesitation that seems to shroud his every motion is gone. "I will… take your place, Mei-san, if you ever want me to."

That's all she needs.

Mei turns to leave, and her lengthening hair trails at her waist because she wears it long, long for her secretive pride. Her dress is remade in a blue fabric even richer than before, one that weaker shinobi scoff at, wondering how anyone could be dangerous while wearing something like that. But the wide-brimmed hat on her head contradicts them all. Her eyelids are tinted expertly turquoise, done with unshaking fingers. Her lips are stained a bloodlike red, simply because to those who have power, this is the silent sign that they will recognize. She walks into the calm sea breeze, and it calms her.

* * *

(This is not entirely canon-compliant, if you've read the manga.)

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